


Serious

by silently



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 23:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11885370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silently/pseuds/silently
Summary: She, and they, were earnest-serious, not /dramatic/ serious. Their relationship was easy and natural, and generally uncomplicated. Even the fucking superhero thing was more a chance for her to check out his ass or make jokes about his suit than anything else. He'd never been seriously hurt in all the time she'd known about this extracurricular, and nothing big had happened in Queens since Toomes. It all felt relatively safe, and with the way he smiled after a night on patrol, she couldn't help but halfway equate being Spider-Man with spending time in a bouncy castle.So why now, lying next to this boy, no drama in sight, does she feel like the planet just stopped rotating?





	Serious

She's lying curled up against him, pressing her body into his, leg over his leg, hand on his chest, nose to his cheek. He's calm, and she loves that he can hold her like this and be utterly at peace. 

She looks down, and he spends a moment with his gaze lost on her eyelashes.

"What?" He says, practically feeling her thinking.

"It's overwhelming to be this close to you sometimes." 

Peter smiles and looks up at the ceiling, unable to believe his luck with this girl.

"Really though, Peter, I need it to stop because I look at you and just can't handle it." Her voice is teasing but she's saying exactly what's on her mind. She presses her hand into his chest roughly, playfully.

"Get ugly or something so I'll have a chance to catch my breath." 

She almost can't say that last bit out loud, and it ends in a whisper. Her cheeks are reddening, and she's burying her face into his sleeve. 

He kisses the top of her head. "I love you," he lets out in a breathy laugh.

Turning again to face him, she feels her smile falter. Out of nowhere, things are serious. 

The two of them have been consciously, openly, acknowledging-it-out-loud-and-everything in love for a few weeks now, but even taking that step had felt lighthearted in a way. They'd gone out for ice cream, and he told her he loved her as he threw away his napkin and reached to push open the door to leave. That chocolate fudge was amazing. I love you, by the way. That's why I let you have some. You know I get territorial with my ice cream. But yeah, I love you so.. I kind of hoped the ice cream thing would say it for me, but it actually feels nice to say that out loud. You don't have to say anything, I really, I just, I felt it so I wanted to say it--- She let him ramble for those few sentences as she processed what he actually was saying before she cut him off with a Stop talking you loser and let me say it back. 

She, and they, were earnest-serious, not /dramatic/ serious. Their relationship was easy and natural, and generally uncomplicated. Even the fucking superhero thing was more a chance for her to check out his ass or make jokes about his suit than anything else. He'd never been seriously hurt in all the time she'd known about this extracurricular, and nothing big had happened in Queens since Toomes. It all felt relatively safe, and with the way he smiled after a night on patrol, she couldn't help but halfway equate being Spider-Man with spending time in a bouncy castle. 

So why now, lying next to this boy, no drama in sight, does she feel like the planet just stopped rotating?

Maybe it's the first time she looks at him and thinks long term. Their timeline before had been exactly and entirely contained in the present moment. He was cute. They were dating. There was adrenaline. It was good. It was great. It was high school. There were serious things happening in the world, causes to fight for and wrongs to be righted, but nothing about /her/ life was truly intense, yet. She had long term plans, but they were Michelle plans. 

Now, suddenly, though, it's like she can see the hands of a god she doesn't believe in shaping her life, and Peter Parker is a sturdy pillar at the heart of it. For whatever reason, it's in this moment that she realizes how when he looks in her eyes she isn't being looked at, she's being seen. That his estimation of her is an accurate estimation. That if she dies tomorrow, he has a solid understanding of everything that she is and she won't disappear from the earth, not really. 

It feels like she's given him something she wasn't aware she could give.

This makes her feel more vulnerable than the first time she took off her clothes and let him touch every part of her. She feels like she's passed a point of no return, like she was just a person minding her own business a few minutes ago and now she's part of something. Of someone. 

She inhales sharply, as if about to say something, and he looks at her, grinning just because he gets to look at her, unaware of this massive shift inside her. 

Michelle never does her hair. She doesn't put on any makeup, and she doesn't care about the clothes she wears or the various social groups at school. She's never cared if people liked her or not or if anyone even noticed her, because she's never been really anything to notice. There are serious things happening in the world that she tries to educate herself about, and that takes more energy than anything else. Someday, in the future, when she has something to say, once she's read all the books and learned all the history and gotten a few degrees, then she might want to start attracting some attention, because then she'll be worth listening to. But for now, she's just some high school kid. She's nothing serious--not yet--so who cares what people think. 

But now she's looking at Peter and it doesn't matter that she's a high school kid. It doesn't matter that everyone has a first love and she's living something that everyone on the planet has already experienced and written about a million times. It suddenly doesn't matter that this moment isn't objectively important to the world, isn't groundbreaking, isn't one for the history books. It doesn't matter that maybe it's sappy and ridiculous from the outside--because it's hers. And for the first time in her entire life, that means something strong and real and valuable.

It feels like power to be hard and unfeeling, to not cry in sad movies and to not be so easily played by marketing campaigns and PR machines, but Michelle knows in this second that it's cliche to feel certain things because it's human to feel certain things. And human connection is part of what makes you real. This moment with Peter--all her moments with Peter, but she didn't realize it til now--is powerful if she lets herself feel all of it, if she lays herself out on the line, if she takes herself seriously for once. Something powerful can come from her if she stops thinking about how tiny her existence is in the face of the rest of the world and starts thinking about how massive her heart feels at this moment.

And future powerhouse activist/author/general-badass Michelle will have valuable contributions for the broader universe, but this Michelle is real and alive and valuable too, just for being real and alive and here and connected.

This boy is so good, so wholeheartedly and authentically good, that she's been broken open. Right now is a moment that isn't just /happening/. It's not a step to somewhere grander in the future. It's not a temporary or fleeting thing that she can surf as it moves, feeling it but not letting it take any of the skin off her back. No. This moment is full bodied. It has its claws in her. It's a well that goes all the way down. It's a blinding wide-eyed look at the sun. It's serious. 

There's no distance between them anymore. She didn't realize she still had walls up, but until this exact moment she still had walls up. 

He's still looking at her, waiting for her to say something, and she's got her mouth open like a fish. 

She blinks. 

It feels like the next thing she says has to convey all of her epiphanies to Peter.

You get me! I'm real and you get me! I'm real because you get me so I have to have been real this whole time! I love you! I don't have any secrets and I'm giving you the power to destroy me and I know this sounds melodramatic but it's the fitting amount of drama because this is a serious moment! I'll never be the same! My life is actually happening, and to me of all people!

She says, "Thanks."

"What'd I do?"

"You take me seriously."

"There's no other way to take someone like you."

**Author's Note:**

> thanks ✌ it's my first thing! tell me if I should write more


End file.
